Hey Clutchers,
We’re excited to bring you new patch update that includes improvements to the driving experience, combat, the tracks & more!
Here are the details of what’s new:
Driving Experience
- Auto correction no longer swings the vehicle
- Increased vehicle grip
- Changed steering angles on higher speeds
- Adjusted the speed value of drift boost levels
- Speed boosts now override maximum speed
- Camera screen effects now blend with acceleration, instead of static boost effects
- Changed oscillation of car speed camera shake to prevent nausea
- Camera rotation now starts following the car when the car reaches certain steering input to give less static feeling to the camera behavior
- Introduced more slight differences of vehicles within the weight classes to make the vehicles feel more unique
- Fixed cars climbing on walls
- Fixed cars climbing on other cars
- Player starts with higher initial speed after respawning
Combat
Combat changes
Introduced ‘lock-on’ mechanic, to require proper racing in effective attacking
- Players are required to target opponents for 1 second before any fired projectiles will home in on opponents
- The reticle changes color when the time requirement has been reached
- Losing the target will reset the locking in mechanic
- Players can still fire projectile abilities before the time requirement has been reached, projectiles will then travel in a straight line
All offensive abilities no longer require energy but still go on cooldown after use
- Energy is now only used by the Shield ability, which enables the player to participate in both offense and defense simultaneously. One full energy bar allows two shield usage
- Introduced short cooldown between shield activation, to give offensive players a gap in defense to exploit
- Default key binds are now more intuitive: X for Basic Attack and B for Shield
Offensive Balancing
Basic Abilities
- Reduced cooldown of Basic Attack abilities with slight differences between per class
- Slightly reduced damage of Basic Attack abilities
- Increased fire rate of all Basic Attacks & all Basic Attacks now deliver their full damage faster
Special Abilities
- Increased damage of most Hazard Special abilities (Mines, Barriers)
- Reduced lifetime of Hazard Special abilities (Mines, etc.)
- Increased Cooldown of Hazard Special abilities (Mines, etc.)
Ability Activation
- When the race starts offensive abilities will have a default cooldown of 8 seconds before they can be used. This allows the pack to settle in its initial configuration before combat is enabled with an explosive start
- When a vehicle respawns, its offensive abilities will have a default cooldown of 8 seconds before they can be used. This allows previous attackers to overtake in relative safety, preventing being immediately shot down by respawned vehicles.
User Interface
HUD
The following changes were made to increase readability of the Health, Shield Energy and available Abilities:
- Health is now a green bar on the left
- Shield Energy is a blue bar on the right
- Offensive abilities light up orange when ready
- Shields light up blue when ready
- Overall size of the HUD is increased
Game Mode UI
- Introduced contextual description for each of the available game modes, while hovering over the button
Vehicle Damage
Implemented several features to communicate vehicle damage
- Vehicle health is visualized on the vehicle body depending on the health amount and can be seen as subtle body deformation, grime & grunge and smoke particles
- Added collision impact sounds
AI balancing
Increased overall effectiveness of the AI vehicles in combat ability usage & driving scenarios
- AI chooses between dumbfiring projectile abilities or waiting for the homing time based on their target’s positioning.
- AI now more effectively chooses when to use on-track abilities (ex. mines, barriers or ‘tail’ type abilities)
- AI now more effectively chooses when to use AOE type abilities (ex. Sonic Boom)
- AI is now slightly more competitive during driving scenarios
Tracks
Cyber Arena/Reverse
- Split looping roads adjusted based on the new vehicle behavior
- Split looping roads exits angled better to prevent cars from crashing into a wall.
- Bump in the road near the end of the track reduced
Pipes/Reverse
- Widened narrow road at the start of the map to allow vehicles to drive and drift through it
- Structures around the large courtyard adjusted based on new vehicle behavior, allowing for easier drifting
- Building removed from the downward slope, ramp added instead
- Pipe roads and their exits adjusted to facilitate the vehicle behavior better.
- First pipe now flows into a curved wall which players can drive along
- Removed the pipe jump and connected it with the next section of pipe
- Barriers and collision around track adjusted to allow for better flow
Twister/Reverse
- Smoothed out initial S-curve to allow for more effective drifting
Saltspine/Reverse
- Fixed minor collision issues
- Adjusted piston obstacles logic to more effectively kill vehicles beneath it
- Fixed several AI pathing issues
We would love to hear your thoughts on the new changes & improvements! Please use our Community Discord to share your feedback and suggestions.
The team is continuing to work on the next updates that will bring further track, combat improvements and much more!
Happy racing,
The Cyber Clutch Team